Author's note: Hey! Look! I finally got my s*** together enough to FINALLY post a new chapter. Why'd I sensor that? I don't know. It's almost 3am, so my brain-thoughts aren't up to speed at the moment. Anyway…..*sweat drop* Sorry for the wait… Heh-heh…. Well, I hope you guys like it. Again, constructive criticism is welcomed just as much as praise, so if you think I could have done better let me know how so I can improve this thing.
Also, I'd like to thanks again to AyumuMatsuoXIII for another uplifting review! Made my day when I read it.
And, thanks to Hope of Darkness and fairytailshipper05 for the follows!
Chapter 4: Softie and Mother Hen
It took from the middle of the morning until dusk for them to reach the town of Criostail, which was near the peak of the mountain. It was a quaint, little town; there were cobblestone streets lined with small brick cottages and the occasional brick building, the entire place was surrounded by thick forest, everything was frosted with snow which sparkled in the warm glow of the sunset, and the streetlights and sculptures that decorated the town seemed to be made of some sort of crystal. The entire thing looked like something strait out of a children's Christmas book, and Rune was enchanted by it. Though she tried not to show it, the beautiful sight made her eyes sparkle with child-like wonderment, which made Laxus smirk,
It wasn't long before the teens were noticed by the townsfolk, who greeted them and inquired what they were doing in such an isolated place. Laxus explained that they were there to handle the mission request that had been sent to their guild, and the townsfolk were ecstatic. The town's economy relied heavily on the Lacrima mine located on the mountain's peak, but a monster has recently taken up residence there, making it impossible to extract the crystal from the mine. They had sent person after person, group after group to try and slay the monster, but none of them ever returned. By the time Rune and Laxus got to the town, they had raised the reward from 2,500,000 Jewels to 3,000,000 Jewels in an attempt to make the job more enticing to strong mages, which was a pleasant surprise. The locals had very little information about the monster since anyone who got close enough to the beast to learn anything about it never came back. All they know is that it is large, has horns, and they suspect it uses ice or snow magic. Rune's eyes flashed with determination and anticipation at that last detail.
"This is going to be fun." She thought, mentally smirking.
The townspeople gave them rooms for the night, since going in to the woods at night was pretty much suicide, especially with that monster lurking around. After they had eaten, the two went into their separate rooms for the night. It was only 8:00 at this time, so Laxus was not ready to go to sleep yet. With nothing better to do, Laxus decided to go out on his balcony for some fresh air. The chilled air felt good on his face, and the moon made the snow shimmer like a sheet of diamonds. He just stood there, leaning against the railing, thinking about this and that when, for some reason, his thoughts eventually wandered to the black-haired mage he had been forced to accompany.
"Why's that little twerp so pissed all the time? What's her story? Wait, why do I even care?" He kept trying to shake off any thoughts about her, but after a while he gave up and had to admit that he was curious about the guild's new member. After all, she is the only member of the guild whose story he didn't know; in fact, she was the only member of the guild whose story no one knew. Hell, he didn't even know what magic she used! Sure, she had used one spell to attack him yesterday, but he didn't see it.
His thoughts were interrupted by something that sounded like sniffling. He looked to his left, his right, and down to the ground, but he couldn't find the source of the sound. Then, he looked up at the roof of the inn. There he saw Rune sitting on the roof with her chin rested on her knees, which she had hugged to her chest, and she was trembling. Laxus just stood there, staring at the girl. Was she crying? Or was it just because she was dumb enough to plop her ass down in the snow, in the middle of the night, in a snow covered mountaintop town, without a coat.
He got his answer in a single tear that glittered in the moonlight as it slid down her face. Rune hadn't seemed to have noticed his presence; if she had, she didn't do anything to indicate it. She just sat there, staring blackly at the tree line in front of her until she suddenly snapped her head up and turned it to the left. After that, she just sat there, staring at the woods as if she were searching for something.
Whatever she was looking for, she must have found it because she slid off of the roof, on to her balcony, hopped over the railing, on to the ground one story down, and tore off in the direction she had been staring.
"What the hell is that brat doing now?" he thought, standing there staring after her for a few minutes before hopping off of his balcony to chase after her.
Rune tore through the forest as fast as she could, dodging trees as she did so. The icy air burned her skin, but it was hardly noticed. The snow was deep, making her movements require more energy than usual without the results she was used to, but she pressed on anyway with her eyes focused dead-ahead in a predatory gaze. She halted at the edge of a large clearing where a young boy, about eight or nine years old, with short brown hair came running from the trees. The boy tripped on something buried in the snow and fell. He turned around and looked at the sky in horror. A large creature flew over the trees and began its decent towards the boy, causing him to scream once more. He closed his eyes and braced for impact, but it never came.
The boy cautiously opened one eye and saw that the creature was gone. He opened the other eye and began to look around for the creature; when he looked towards his right, he saw that the beast had been knocked off course and now had its eyes locked on a teenaged girl with black hair, and she had her eyes locked on it.
(Meanwhile )
"Damn it!" The blonde mage cursed. "How'd she get so far away so fast? Why'd she come out here anyway? And, why does there need to be this much damn snow!?" Laxus kept running, but he was having a hard time dodging the trees in the darkness, and an even harder time trudging through the snow. "Stupid brat!" he growled.
Suddenly he heard a strange screech. "What the hell was that?!" he thought. "Wait, is that the reason she came out here? No, impossible. There's no way she could have heard that from the inn, is there?"
Laxus continued onward until he reached the clearing. There he saw a young boy sitting in the snow with a shocked look on his face. Laxus followed the boy's gaze and saw his partner staring down a strange creature. It was gray with black and white bands on its face and its sides. It had a birdlike head, horns that resembled those of a bull with black and white stripes on them, its body resembled that of a horse as did its front and back legs, and it had a long, serpentine tail.
"What the hell is that? She's not really going to try to fight that thing, is she?"
Both figures remained where they were, neither of them willing to make the first move. After what seemed like a century long standoff, the beast rose up, somehow flying even though it had no wings to do so. It reached a height above the trees and then dove down to strike the young mage, but she sunk into the ground before the beast's beak could even touch her.
"Where the hell did she go?" Laxus thought and be began looking around for her. The creature seemed to be thinking the same thing because it too was searching for the girl.
Suddenly a black, wispy mass with a bright, purple glow began to rise from the ground behind the beast and take on a humanoid form. It opened what could be assumed to be its eyes; though only one was visible. All that was there was what appeared to be an almond shaped hollow that was glowing with some sort of supernatural, red light from within.
The beast whipped its tail at the mass, but the tail went right through it and where the mass had been separated started to fuse back together.
Then the mass began to speak to the beast. "Sorry, but you can't hurt me with that when I'm like this. Unfortunately for you though, I can."
Its voice sounded an awful lot like the missing black-haired mage's, but it seemed rather echoed and distant, almost ghostly. It seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, yet nowhere at the same time.
The mass raised one hand in front of its face. Its fingers became long and pointed like claws and began to glow electric violet. The mass lunged forward and raked its claws across the beast's back. The beast shrieked in pain and tried to strike the mass with it tail once more, of course, failing. The mass lunged forward again to land another attack with its claws. The beast dodged the claws, but it was unable to do anything about what happened next.
"Dark Demon Slash!" the mass bellowed as one small wave of energy came from each of the mass's five fingers in the shape of claw marks.
These waves didn't break the beast's hide, but it did send it flying. The beast slammed into a tree and fell to the ground. In a matter of seconds the beast was on its feet, but it had lost its bravado and shrunk away from the black mass. It looked like it wanted to run but was too afraid to turn its back to its attacker.
"Well, go on then; shoo." the mass said, making a shooing motion with its hand. Something in the masses tone let the beast know that it was safe to turn tail and run, and it wasted no time in doing so.
As soon as the retreating beast could no longer be heard, the mass began to change. The black began to give way to colors and dissipate like smoke. After a few moments, the mass was completely gone and Rune was standing in its place.
"So it was her." Laxus thought. "What magic was that?"
The black-haired mage turned her attention to the little boy, who was still sitting on the ground, and began walking towards him. "Hey, you'll get sick if you stay down there!" she said, holding out a hand to help the boy up.
The boy took it with a shaky "thank you", as Kira pulled him to his feet.
"Now then," she said in a seemingly calm voice as she bent down to look the boy in the eye, "would you mind telling me what in God's name you're doing out here, at night, alone!?" she demanded in a slightly enraged tone, gripping his shoulders to keep him in place.
"U-umm." The boy said shaking, not from the cold, but from fear.
"Well! Out with it, boy!"
"I-it's m-my dad." The boy said with tears forming in his eyes.
"What about him?"
"H-he went missing two days ago, and-and I w-went to look for him."
"THAT IS REALLY STUPID!" she yelled, standing upright, but she held her tightening grasp on the boy's shoulders. "YOU KNOW THERE IS A MONSTER ON THE LOOSE, DO YOU NOT?! NOT TO MENTION ALL THE CREATURES THAT NORMALLY LIVE HERE!" Then, she was in his face again. "Do you have any idea how close you came to getting yourself killed!? If I hadn't happened to be outside, no one would have heard you and that beast would be munching on your lifeless corpse right now! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT!?"
"But-but, I h-had to l-look for him!" the boy was crying now, hard. "I-I thought-ought that if I star-arted looking for him n-now, I could-ould find him before…. B-before the monster killed-illed him!"
Kira's eyes softened at the boy and knelt down in front of the boy and pulled him into a hug. "I know how you feel, little guy; I really do, but you can't put yourself in danger like this… I promise I'll find your dad for you."
"But-ut, what if, what if he's-e's already dead-ead by then!?" the boy sobbed.
"He won't be….. I just know it." She stayed there for several minutes, waiting for the boy to calm down, before standing up. "Let's get you home."
"O-okay." He sniffled and grabbed her hand.
"Wow, Kira! I didn't know you had such a soft side!" Laxus taunted, emerging from the edge of the clearing.
"Go to Hell!" she yelled back at him. "You could have taken the boy home instead of watching me fight that thing, you know!"
"W-what ?" Laxus asked, flabbergasted. "How long have you known I was here?!"
"I knew you were following me." Kira answered.
"How?" he asked, still dumbfounded.
"I could hear you, I could smell your scent, and you can't conceal your magic worth shit. You should probably work on that last one."
"I know, I know. Wait, you could hear and smell me following you? How'd you do that when I was so far behind you?"
"My senses are more acute than a normal person's" she shrugged. "
Why?" He asked, confused as to what she meant by 'normal people'.
"Now's not the time nor the place. I gotta get the kid home before he catches his death," she said before she turned her back to the boy and crouched down. "Get on my back; it'll be faster if I run."
"Okay." The now mostly calm boy said
"Wait," Laxus said and walked over to the two of them while shrugging off his coat. "You'll catch YOUR death for forgetting your coat."
"Thanks, but I'll survive." Rune politely refused.
"Just take the damn thing!" Laxus snapped. "I can just use my Lightning Body to get back in a couple seconds, and I'm in charge of you right now. Which means if you get sick, I'll get the blame for it."
Rune rolled her eyes and took the coat. "Fine, just quit nagging me, Mother hen."
"Tch." Was all the response Laxus bothered to give before disappearing in a bolt of lightning.
